By Kim Ramsey
College Topics Staff Writer

The Cavalier Daily has been U.Va. students’ main—and often only—outlet for news and opinion since 1890, but there was a time when it was nearly silenced by University officials bent on asserting their control over it.
In the spirit of Jefferson, the student-run newspaper and its alumni banded together to fight for a free press, and in doing so planted the seeds for U.Va.’s first student-activity alumni organization, the Cavalier Daily Alumni Association.
The CDAA, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, has helped rescue the newspaper from legal and financial difficulties, as well as provided training, encouragement and a sounding board for aspiring journalists on the publication’s staff.
“The CDAA does a lot of good work, and it’s easy to assume we’ve been around forever,” says CDAA President Diane Krehmeyer. “But the story of how the group got started is a reminder of the difference alumni can make to an organization’s survival and success.”
• • •
Like most student newspapers, the CD has often irked University administrators and student leaders with its reporting and editorial barbs. In the mid-1970s, however, frictions escalated after the paper helped pressure then-U.Va. President Frank Hereford to resign from an all-white country club and published the leaked transcripts of a secret honor trial.
Seeking to curb student-media excesses, in 1976, the Board of Visitors established a Media Board to govern the activities of the University’s media organizations. The board, composed of students chosen by the presidents of the University’s schools, was empowered to recommend corrections, censure, and even remove a group’s managing board members.
As the only daily publication on Grounds and a breeding ground for future professional journalists, The Cavalier Daily strongly resented any administration oversight.
Stuart Jones, business manager of The Cavalier Daily in 1978-’79, recalls “ranting and raving” about the Media Board in the pages of the newspaper, as well as questioning First Amendment lawyers about the board’s legality.
On at least two occasions the paper refused to print letters of censure by the Media Board. It wasn’t until the paper’s managing board bluntly refused a Media Board demand, however, that the issue boiled over.
According to William Spatz, projects editor for The Cavalier Daily in 1977, problems arose when a CD reporter began making political statements in public meetings.
“The CD editors at the time were keenly interested in operating the newspaper in adherence to professional journalistic standards,” recalls Rick Neel, then a CD associate news editor. “As part of that effort, the editors insisted that the news staff remain nonpartisan to preserve the objectivity of the newspaper.”
Consequently, Spatz told the reporter to either “stop being a newsmaker or leave the staff.”
According to Neel, the student claimed he was being forced out because of his conservative Republican views. He took his firing to the Media Board, which insisted he be reinstated.
The Cavalier Daily stood its ground.
University President Frank Hereford—ironically a former CD staff member himself—decided to quell the paper’s defiance and chose, in Neel’s words, “the most vulnerable time for The Cavalier Daily in which to launch his strike.”
On March 31, 1979, according to Neel, Hereford told the University’s Board of Visitors that The Cavalier Daily was “operating in direct defiance of the Visitors’ authority.” Hereford received the Board of Visitors’ permission to remove all University support—including office space—if the paper did not acquiesce.
The following day was Neel’s first as the paper’s newly elected editor-in-chief.
The CD’s initial impulse was to stall for time. Neel remembers telling Hereford that the board wished to ascertain their legal rights and that they had “a responsibility to safeguard unconstitutional infringements,” but that they were willing to negotiate.
Hereford responded with an 18-hour ultimatum: The Cavalier Daily must recognize the full authority of the Media Board or lose its on-Grounds office space and equipment.
On Tuesday, April 3, Neel issued a public statement: The managing board “could not recognize the Media Board’s ability to control content under its current constitution.”
At approximately 4:20 that afternoon, Hereford ordered the CD’s offices vacated. Then-Business Manager James Fox was prepared; he’d already arranged to lease space and equipment from Charlottesville’s Daily Progress, where The Cavalier Daily published its next three issues.
During that time, the tide shifted in favor of the student publication.
Tuesday night, Student Council voted to “condemn” Hereford and the Board of Visitors’ actions, and the First Year Council encouraged students to boycott classes Thursday afternoon to attend a rally in front of Pavilion VIII, Hereford’s office. Approximately 1,500 students heeded the call and gathered on the Lawn.
National media outlets picked up the story, and their coverage was “placing as much pressure on the administration as the administration was placing on The Cavalier Daily,” said Neel.
Meanwhile, the student editors turned to their best allies: the Cavalier Daily’s alumni.
The former staffers rallied to the cause by “generating favorable publicity, obtaining pro bono legal assistance from top talent and raising money for related purposes,” recalls Spatz.
Before long, Neel said, the CD had a “dream team” of lawyers led by Charlottesville attorney Ted Hogshire and supported by the Student Press Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union and other respected attorneys in Washington, D.C., and Richmond.
The collected alumni also offered advice. Tim Wheeler, who was editor-in-chief in 1973-’74, remembers urging Neel and his board to seek a compromise with the administration.
“Some thought we were selling the CD out, that we should give no ground at all,” Wheeler said. “But we feared that if the CD stopped publishing, even temporarily, University administrators would gin up some other publication that they could control to fill the vacuum of information.”
Coincidentally, the first issue of a rival newspaper, the U.Va. Daily, appeared on Grounds the following Monday. While Neel believes founder Peter Briggs “literally started it on his own,” he admits it was fairly early on that some “vested interests at the University” began supporting the fledgling paper, which was later renamed the University Journal.
In the end, after what Neel described as “tense behind-the-scenes negotiations,” a compromised was reached: The Cavalier Daily agreed to recognize the Board of Visitors’ authority over some aspects of the paper’s operations, but not over what the paper printed. University officials accepted the statement and allowed the newspaper back into its offices.
The crisis was over, and The Cavalier Daily had declared independence.
• • •
The Cavalier Daily had explored seeking independence before the Media Board flap. Samuel Barnes, managing editor in 1974, recalls discussing the need to form an alumni association to help the CD buy a printing press and become independent of the University. Support from an alumni association, Barnes reasoned, “would give the CD the ability to do things it wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.”
However, it took the severity of getting kicked out of its offices, and the perseverance of then-editor-in-chief Neel to make CD independence, and the Cavalier Daily Alumni Association, a reality.
After his graduation, Neel retained a lawyer to study the possibility of incorporating a Cavalier Daily alumni association that would provide the newspaper with financial and moral support.
“The CD really struggled financially during those years, and poor relations with the University did not help,” said Stuart Jones, who was the CD’s business manager in 1978-’79. “There was a very real concern that the CD would not survive unless alumni took an interest in helping it.”
In addition, as Neel wrote to alumnus Stephen Wells in 1980, an alumni association would serve as a counterweight should “the University administration ever want to enter into another confrontation over the Media Board.”
Neel recalls wanting “to protect future editors from facing the type of grueling experience I had as a 20-year-old newspaper editor.”
Over the next three years, Neel drafted a constitution for the group. He also met with Gilbert Sullivan, the executive director of the University Alumni Association, whom Neel found to be “keenly interested” in the idea of a Cavalier Daily alumni association.
“The UVAA was encouraging affinity groups for alumni based on student activities,” recalls Neel. The UVAA believed that alumni student activity alumni associations would keep alumni more involved with the University and would “tap into the good feelings” alumni had about their chosen activities.
From the U.Va. Alumni Association, Neel gained a pledge of technical assistance and seed money for fund-raising. Alumni Hall assisted in creating a mailing list, provided database services, and agreed to manage the CDAA’s funds as part of the U.Va. fund.
“I received a tremendous support from Gilly Sullivan and his team at Alumni Hall,” Neel said. “They went the extra mile and were very instrumental in making the CDAA a reality.”
On Feb. 26, 1983, the Cavalier Daily Alumni Association was formed during a conference call with nine CD alumni on the line. The nine elected themselves as an interim board of directors, then arranged for a meeting later that year. Neel was chosen the group’s first president.
“Our vision was to provide the CD with a springboard to independence, or at least to help it survive and thrive,” said Wheeler.
• • •
Through the course of the mid- to late ‘80s, the CDAA met regularly, held fund-raisers and journalism workshops, grew in size, and cemented its relationship with the University Alumni Association.
By 1990, the fear of University control over The Cavalier Daily had given way to a severe economic threat, as newspapers across the country were struggling with rising newsprint prices and stiff competition from other media outlets. The CD was no exception, and the CDAA was once again called upon to help ensure the paper’s survival.
“The newspaper had aging equipment, was experiencing severe financial hardship, was being threatened with eviction for fire code violations, and had a growing University-supported competitor in the University Journal,” said Scott Ramsey, CD operations manager from 1990-’91.
“There were a lot of people who thought the CD was not going to make it, and a lot of people in the University community would have been happy to see the CD go away,” recalls Greg Trevor, who was then president of the CDAA.
“The CDAA helped in several supporting but critical ways to keep the newspaper alive during that period,” Ramsey said. Assistance took the form of temporary cash loans, equipment purchases and free legal and financial advice, including detailed audits of the CD’s books.
“The CD might have survived that era without the CDAA,” Ramsey added, “but then again, the UJ went under several years later with less debt and better equipment.”
• • •
As the CD turned the corner from debt to profitability, the newspaper proved it can survive. Today, the alumni group focuses on helping the organization—and its student journalists—thrive.
Major initiatives include arranging workshops and seminars for the student staff and providing more than $30,000 worth of scholarships to staff members pursuing summer internships in journalism.
Through a partnership forged by the CDAA and the Virginia Press Association, Opinion Editor Becky Krystal spent this past summer writing news and feature stories at the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The alumni underwrite an internship for one student they select to work at a newspaper in the state.
Krystal called the CDAA-VPA internship a kind of “back door” that allowed her to bypass the competition for the Times-Dispatch’s limited openings. Working in the Metro section at the daily paper is an “unique opportunity that I probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise,” she added.
Not all of the CDAA’s activities are directed toward assisting current students. The group also plans social events and provides networking opportunities for its alumni membership.
And its primary fund-raising focus today is not on the present or future survival of The Cavalier Daily but rather on preserving the paper’s past. The alumni group is working with Alderman Library to convert more than 100 years’ worth of the newspaper’s print archives to a digital format.
“The alumni group has grown dramatically since its early days—from nine members to more than 2,000—but its original goals have remained unchanged,” says Krehmeyer, “and I think that says a lot about the vision of the CDAA founders.”
“You cannot give Rick Neel enough credit for starting this organization and seeing it through those early years,” Jones added. “A lot of other student organizations do not have alumni groups, and that is because there are not enough people like Rick to do the hard work to make it happen.”
According to the University of Virginia Alumni Association’s Director of Alumni Programs Wayne Cozart, The Cavalier Daily is one of only a handful of student groups on Grounds to have an organized alumni association. It was also the first.
When asked why the CD would be the first, Cozart cited the newspaper’s independence as a primary motivator. “In its unique position as an independent organization working on Grounds, the CD needs its alumni to support its existence and needs.”
Asking the CD’s alumni themselves why they participate in the CDAA—some as many as 70 years after graduation—will elicit a quite different answer.
“There’s an ongoing romance with the paper,” said Trevor, CD editor-in-chief in 1985-’86. “It’s like someone you care about that you then want to care for. Maybe now for me it’s parental: The CD nurtured me, and now I want to help nurture it.”
CDAA Vice President Lisa Guernsey cites a desire to continue being “part of the collective learning experience” of the CD. “There’s no journalism school at U.Va., but the students produce an amazing newspaper anyway, out of sheer oomph and passion. I wanted to stay connected to that energy.”
For CDAA founder Neel, staying connected is what it’s all about.
“What excites me is that after 20 years the CDAA is still going strong,” Neel said. “At the University you can create a tradition in two or three years. But to keep it going for 20 years shows the strong feelings and great pride that the students have for The Cavalier Daily.”
(CD alumni Diane Krehmeyer and Tim Wheeler also contributed to this article. An abbreviated version is scheduled to appear in the fall issue of the UVAA’s newsmagazine, Alumni News.)